


i know you're tortured within

by endofadream



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Angst, Because with me it's always either angst or porn, Harry Hart Lives, M/M, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Some triggers but nothing major
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-08 07:23:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4295814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endofadream/pseuds/endofadream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the gun is pulled and he stands there, unarmed, there is one last, desperate thought, followed by a heavy swallow as he faces down the demise that’s been chasing him for the last thirty years.</p><p>  <i>I didn't even get to tell Eggsy that I love him.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	i know you're tortured within

**Author's Note:**

> [hides face] okAY hello I rarely write in new fandoms, especially fandoms where I'm as out of my element as I am with this one, but I've lost count of how many times I've seen this film and it put its claws in my heart long ago with no intention of ever letting go. So here we are. And writing from Harry's POV is truly fucking difficult, especially for a first foray, and I regret it so much.
> 
> Not Brit-picked but I tried my best, so sorry if the dumb Midwestern American screws it up! Feel free to point out an errors/gross inaccuracies and I will gladly fix them!

_and so i scream, "mayday, i’m in trouble!_  
_send somebody on the double!"_  
_scratching at the floor inside my mind;  
_ _they all accept the lie._

——

As the gun is pulled and he stands there, unarmed, there is one last, desperate thought, followed by a heavy swallow as he faces down the demise that’s been chasing him for the last thirty years.

_I didn't even get to tell Eggsy that I love him._

——

Harry Hart’s first thought upon waking up is that, contrary to everything he’d expected, dying fucking _hurts_. His second thought is that the afterlife—if that’s what indeed this is, though a lifetime of atheism has instilled an unshakable doubt—looks a lot like the deceptively beautiful wooded countryside of Kentucky. His third, upon blinking and hearing familiar voices of people who most definitely aren’t dead, spikes his heart rate and sends a stab of pain through his head; even through clenched teeth his moan comes out as a whimper, and he holds his breath afterward for several long moments to make sure that he isn’t found out.

When he turns his head (and it sends his world reeling, tilting dangerously around him) he sees that his glasses are off to the side, skewed and twisted and broken beyond repair. One of the lenses, the left one, is spiderwebbed with cracks, a comet impact where the bullet had managed to smash through the bulletproof glass. In between the shards, glistening wetly in the Kentucky sun, is blood.

Then Harry finally notices the blackness on one side of his vision, feels the wet seeping warmth of blood down his cheek to dry tacky in his hair; even through the pain that seizes his body and makes him grit his teeth he can piece together what had happened, what it means.

Because despite the bullet that he remembers speeding towards his head he’s not dead but is, miraculously, very much _alive_.

——

He wakes up again at HQ in the private medical ward, briefly thinks that he’s been here far too many times in the last few months for his liking, and presses the button.

He finds out that it’s been over a month.

So maybe it is that kind of movie after all.

——

All things considered, he’d been fairly lucky that the damage hadn't been extensive. The bulletproof lens of his glasses managed to deflect the bullet but hadn't survived the impact, and because of the shards that had been forced into his cornea neither had Harry’s left eye.

The worst that he’s left with after all of this is a milky eye and nasty pinkening scar tissue creeping high up onto his forehead, as well as minor frontal lobe trauma; all in all, nothing that some fairly minor surgery when he’d been brought in hadn't been able to help. He’s grateful for it, too, just to have the opportunity to continue doing what he loves, albeit in a slightly lesser capacity than before.

Harry had never considered himself a vain man, but under the harsh fluorescent of the room’s lighting the reflection that stares back at him is twisted, hideous, even despite the work of the plastic surgeon, a small blonde-haired woman that he’s already met with for post-op checkups. The scars branch out, twist under his hair line, bleed their way down the bone of his cheek. The eye isn’t too bad, but Harry can’t focus on it for more than a few seconds at a time without remembering, and it makes nausea twist and hiss angrily in his belly, coiled low like a waiting snake.

There is a brief _once you said you fancied being a colorful megalomanic, and every villain has to have his scars_ before it’s gone, words he’d only said to get under Valentine’s skin, to show subtly that he was onto him, twisted and mangled as they bounce back to him. A dull ache begins to build at the base of his skull.

He will get used to it, in time, like he does everything else. He has to.

The door opens as Harry turns away to head towards the bed, exhaustion already weighing down his bones just from his few minutes of standing up, and Merlin steps in just as the first blinding spike of pain zips across Harry’s forehead. “Ah, Harry. Good to see you up.”

“Not for much longer.” Harry winces, rubbing his temples as the ache now grows into a murmuring throb. “Blasted headache again.”

“Mm, unfortunately those will be quite common for awhile, if not long-term. A close-range head injury will do that.”

It’s a tease, one of their usual lighthearted jabs, but Harry is hardly focusing on it. It’s been weeks of news about him, about the near-end of the world and the rebuild of it while Harry had been unconscious, and he wants something different.

“Have we—,” he begins, taking a seat at the edge of the bed facing Merlin.

“We can’t tell Eggsy,” Merlin says immediately, and just the mention of his name touches Harry like a live wire, neurons firing and spine straightening in a display that would be difficult to miss from the most observant individuals. Even Merlin’s noticed Harry’s fondness for the boy, though just how much he’s noticed, if he can see the gaping, raw wound in Harry’s chest from his regret, Harry isn't sure. “As far as he knows, Valentine’s shot did manage to kill you.”

Harry opens his mouth, ready to refute, but one single look from Merlin has his jaws clicking shut immediately before working with his repressed irritation, and he tightens the belt on his robe just for something to do. “Protocol,” Merlin reminds him. “We will tell him,” he continues, “in time. Once your condition has improved. You’re awake, Harry, but until you’re fully healed and until we’re ready to bring you back as Arthur”—and he had been told about the poison he’d informed Eggsy of, saving him without even knowing it, and had suppressed a faint smile at the warmth of pride—“you’re going to need to stay here, and you know as well as I do that if Eggsy finds out he’ll never leave your side.”

The last is said with a pointed, knowing look, enough to make heat creep up the back of Harry’s neck.

“So we’re just going to lie to him,” he says, flat, and Merlin at least has the decency to look guilty. It’s no secret that he’s grown fond of the boy as well.

“For now,” Merlin stresses. He crosses the room in long strides and rests his hand on Harry’s shoulder. The touch is heavy, comforting, and Harry closes his eyes, tries not to recall, as he has near-constantly since he’d woken up, the last harsh, barbed exchange between him and Eggsy, words volleyed between them with no purpose other than their acerbic cut. “For now, Lancelot and Galahad are on assignment in Florence.”

“Florence,” Harry repeats, amused. Eggsy’s Italian had been terrible, back during his training, his accent atrocious and stereotypical.

“Something about chemical engineering and bioweapons at the hands of yet another megalomaniacal twat,” Merlin says glibly, squeezing Harry’s shoulder. “Your favourite.”

Harry laughs without humour. Once those kinds of missions had been a personal favourite, but knowing that he’ll never fire a gun again, that his days in active field duty are over, dampens the excitement. “Good to see that the world hadn't changed a bit while I was out.”

“You say it like you’d expected different.”

Harry hadn’t, but sometimes it’s nice to dream, to pretend that destroying one reign or one would-be rise to power is enough to prevent all future ones from happening. History, however, has a way of repeating itself, and as long as humanity thrives there will always be people like Valentine, and there will always be a need for Kingsman.

“I’m far too old to still believe in humanity,” he says. The headache doesn't abate, and soon Harry feels the first crest of nausea as it evolves into one of his frequent migraines. “I think I’d like to rest now, if you don’t mind.”

Merlin acquiesces with a nod and sees himself out silently. Harry stares for countless moments at the white of the wall, contemplating, stomach twisted tightly into knots. His glasses had been transmitting at the time of his alleged death, and Harry knows without knowing that Eggsy had been watching, that he’d seen it all from start to finish. He likes to believe that Eggsy had also somehow heard his regret the split second that the gun had been pulled, a comfort that does little more than exacerbate his burgeoning headache. He closes his eyes.

Because they had said things that they regret, words chosen and aimed at tender, vulnerable spots only visible from all of their time spent together—time more than any knight and his selection have spent together, more than is proper. And Harry had found himself caring less and less as each day had passed.

Eventually he patches himself back together, reaches for his laptop on the rolling tray at the side of the bed. He despises feeling useless.

The target is a little less Valentine, but with the same endgame: wiping out a certain number of the population through chemicals dumped in the water. Harry rolls his eyes slightly despite the pain, because, honestly. All of his years spent in Kingsman and it’s the same rotating schedule with a few exceptions here and there, madmen with truly ridiculous and oftentimes extremely dangerous ideas, missions that require detailed intel and careful plotting, his heart in the back of his throat and adrenaline singing through his veins.

Harry purposefully watches Roxy’s feeds, just to be able to catch a glance of Eggsy, his breath hitching when he does. Eggsy looks good in the suit Harry had had made for him—of course; a bespoke suit _always_ looks good—but there is still a hint of his cocky swagger, his breezy laughter, and Harry latches onto every word that Eggsy says, leaning close to his laptop without realising it.

Eggsy’s Italian is still truly terrible, and whenever Roxy corrects him Harry can hear the restrained laughter in her voice. It doesn't stop the girls from still staring, smitten, whenever Eggsy talks to them, and Harry wishes desperately to not feel the erosion of jealousy in his gut when they do, when he sees through Roxy’s feed Eggsy wink at an especially pretty one and lean in closer.

When he hears _“—prendere a casa mia”_ Harry shuts his laptop with more force than necessary, sitting back and running a hand through his hair. Seduction is a necessary art in their field, a fact that Harry knows all too well himself, though he’s nearly certain that this one has more to do with pleasure rather than business.

Still, he tells himself. Eggsy is a consenting adult. Maybe, since Roxy is there, it is, in fact, for the mission.

It still doesn't quash the urge to throw his laptop across the room.

——

The first indication that something is wrong is a few weeks after Harry wakes up, when med staff finds him in the middle of the night screaming.

It’s a haze, shouted orders underneath the murky, muddled mess of a gripping and clawing nightmare that Harry can’t shake _off, oh god, please no please don’t—_ of rapid-fire memories of the church and the blood and the unexplainable but unshakable and nauseatingly satisfying rage that drove his hands and body to stab and shoot and tackle and punch until he’d been left, panting, the lone survivor over a crumpled, sprawled tragedy with bloodstained hands and bits of brain over his suit as trophies.

He screams, and screams, and there are hands holding him down but still he screams. It’s only once there’s a prick in his arm, then a sluggish chill seeping through his veins, that Harry finally stops struggling and lets the darkness consume his good eye as well.

——

Merlin looks grim but concerned as he delivers the news, and only someone who knows to look, who knows the man as intimately as Harry does, would notice the tight way in which he grips his clipboard, the only indicator of any fissure in his composure: And Harry knows that there is no shame in it, that plenty of other Kingsmen have suffered negatively from either particularly gruesome missions or the weighted knowledge of the consequences of their actions, and he’s certainly not the first nor will he be the last. Fitting room two has enough Kingsman-prescription Prozac in its medical arsenal to prove that point.

“You’re lucky to be alive,” Merlin says, a touch more kindly than he would any other agent. “That’s a miracle in itself.”

Still, he feels a touch of shame whenever it’s brought up, because Harry is a trained killer who pulls the trigger without thinking twice, who has stabbed and beaten and electrocuted and blown up without missing a beat, who has seen bones broken and blood splattered and skulls crushed from the power of his own body alone. He’s the newly-minted head of a secret spy agency, the king to the rest of the knights at the Round Table, and has more bodies to his name than any recent agent. He has seen his name carved onto a bullet and had still managed to beat it.

He’s Harry Hart, the name that gets whispered reverently around headquarters as something akin to a legend.

And he has PTSD.

——

He takes up training again, grits his teeth whenever his coordination is off or his hand doesn't want to work right. He takes to the punching bag for the first time in months, again and again until his back is protesting, arms heavy and numb and knuckles sore despite the tape. Harry aches like he hasn't in years. And, yet, he feels _good_. Feels alive.

He resolutely avoids the shooting range, turns his head quickly whenever there is the glint of a gun. 

——

Their first meeting goes about as well as Harry expected it to. Which is to say, sufficiently not at all.

It isn’t so much a meeting as it is a converging of paths, Harry with the newest folder of paperwork from Merlin under his arm, and Eggsy and Roxy, both looking exhausted but happy and both clearly fresh back from their successful assignment in Florence, which Harry already knew since he’d been tracking their progress back.

They’re engaged in conversation, giving Harry a few moments to observe, and watching the smile break over Eggsy’s face, the way that Roxy leans against his shoulder through a laugh, makes something in Harry’s chest tighten. He’d hoped that he could arrange a proper meeting once Eggsy had returned, something where they could sit down and Harry could try to explain.

Roxy notices him first, stopping dead in her tracks as her eyes widen. Eggsy walks for a few more paces, stops, and follows her gaze, and Harry can almost see something in Eggsy’s eyes shutter closed. For a moment everything is frozen, the air sucked out of the hallway; Harry offers them a wan smile, a faint nod which Roxy returns. He takes a step, opens his mouth to speak, and finally the spell is broken: Eggsy turns, face stony and expressionless, jaw set in a hard line, and strides down the way that he came.

“He’ll come around,” Roxy says in a tone that suggests she’s not too happy about this, either. Accusation is a faint afterbite in her words that tells Harry well enough what she’d be saying if she wasn't addressing her boss. “Just…give him time. He’s been a mess without you.”

Harry nods, because it’s all he can do, because Roxy is right and because he’s been a mess, too, drinking too much and avoiding any mention of that state and feeling like he’s going to vomit when he does. “Great work out there, Lancelot,” he says, instead, and gives her a curt, formal nod. It’s easy to fall back into this version of himself, the rigid man he’d been before he’d rediscovered youth and had drank it in like a dying man. For the first time in years he feels out of his element, stumbling through things in a way that he hasn't since he was younger.

Roxy nods, stoic, though the faint gleam in her eyes belies her composure. “Thank you, Arthur.” The name falls on him wrong, ill-fitting, and Harry aches to shake it off, to try to get things back to the way that they were before. But Eggsy is Galahad now, and everyone from Tristan to Belvedere had spoken out for Harry taking over the Arthur position. Like always Harry will get used to it, not because he wants to, but because he has to.

——

It’s difficult, sometimes, for Harry to stay grounded, for him to keep his tether when something sets him off. Sometimes, that scares Harry more than the attacks themselves.

Sometimes, he closes his eyes, tries the breathing exercises that his doctor had given him, and pretends that Eggsy is with him.

——

Their second meeting is over a crisis in the States over a drug cartel, to which Kay and Eggsy have been assigned but to which no action has yet been taken.

“Galahad,” Merlin says as Eggsy appears in the doorway. It’s strange for Harry to hear his old codename directed at another person, and stranger still to know that it’s Eggsy to whom the codename now belongs, when Galahad still fits Harry like a second skin after wearing him for as long has Harry had. With the strangeness, though, comes a sense of pride, a slight preening that they hadn't given Eggsy another name but had, instead, felt that he could fill Harry’s shoes. Harry pictures Chester’s sneer when Harry had first proposed Lee, then Eggsy, for Kingsman, and gloats silently in the reality that one of them had finally made it. “Come in and shut the door, please.”

Eggsy does, the door whisking shut with a soft _whoosh,_ and though he raises his chin to acknowledge Merlin’s presence his eyes never leave Harry’s. In them is something guarded and reticent, calculating in a way that means cautious danger. Harry thinks that he catches a flash of pain, a faint tightening of Eggsy’s jaw as he studies Harry, but then it’s gone quickly, masked in a flawless poker face, and he straightens.

He fidgets as he stands in a way that reminds Harry of a wild animal: Cagey and ready to flee or attack at any moment. His chin is up, held defiantly in a way that Harry hasn't seen for months.

“Merlin,” Eggsy says; then, quietly, restrained and tight with what Harry can suss out as anger, “ _Arthur_.”

Harry suppresses his wince at the way his new codename is spat mockingly at him, filled with every ounce of spite that Eggsy had (rightfully) felt for the old Arthur. Harry had expected Eggsy to be angry, but still. Expecting and experiencing are two radically different beasts, and Harry is wholly unprepared for the way that the name punches its way through his chest and leaves him winded.

It’s only through true professionalism and their long-standing friendship that Merlin says nothing, acting like the tension in the room isn't thick enough to be cut with a regulation blade, growing ever thicker with every glance that Eggsy throws Harry’s way, flint-sharp glares that cut into Harry’s skin piece by piece, leaving stinging shards embedded deep. Much of the meeting is spent with an urge to pick those invisible shards out of his skin. Harry has had shuriken thrown at him before with the same deadly precision, and though this is much more metaphorical he wouldn't be surprised if the damage would be the same in the end.

“Eggsy,” Harry says as Eggsy turns to leave. “A word, please.”

He uses the cover of professionalism as an excuse to get closer, to look at the boy that he’s quite sure he would move heaven and earth for if asked of him. If he were any other man Harry would feel ashamed at everything, at so obviously cornering Eggsy when the boy’s only choices are to listen to his boss or disobey, but he’s lived long enough, has seen enough, to know by now what he wants. And Eggsy he’s wanted since the moment he had stepped out of the police station, the weak morning light haloing around his head before Harry had spoken; had been willing, then, to beat up an entire pub full of the lowest scum London has to offer the way that a peacock preens and struts its feathers around.

“Sir,” Eggsy says, cold and detached as he comes to a stop at Harry’s bedside, body language proper and every inch the gentleman that Harry has been grooming him to be; pride wins out for a moment as Harry drinks in this new, polished version of Eggsy standing before him. A muscle tics in his jaw as he meets Harry’s gaze, a deep furrow spreading lines between his brow, and oh, how Harry wants to touch those lines with his thumb, gently, until they smooth; how he yearns to slide Eggsy’s glasses off before kissing him senseless, to finally figure out what Eggsy sounds like breathless and drunk with lust.

“Congratulations,” Harry begins, smooth and crisp despite the frantic clamour that trembles within, “on becoming Galahad.” It’s the phrase he’s been waiting to say, just with a different codename, and he wishes more than anything that the circumstances surrounding it had been different. “Merlin’s told me all about what happened at Valentine’s base and I must say that I am very impressed.”

Eggsy’s expression doesn't change, but he holds himself a little straighter. Praise has always worked wonders on him, coming from the lifestyle that he does, and Harry is fighting dirty but he _doesn't care_. He just wants to see Eggsy smile at him again, wants him to drop that perfectly-enunciated accent and speak to Harry with his dropped endings and South London crassness. He wants Eggsy to cease his formalities, misses the way that his name sounds coming off of Eggsy’s tongue.

“And I also wanted to say,” Harry adds, quick, “that I’m sorry—”

“Stop right there,” Eggsy snaps, and Harry does, eyes widening at the force of Eggsy’s rage, and all pretence slips away, stripping from Eggsy’s skin in a flash. “You don’t get to apologise to me like you done nothin’ wrong. You _lied_ to me, let me think you was dead for _months_ , like I was gonna be—like I didn’t—” He pauses, presses his palms agitatedly to his eyes as he turns away and breathes, and several long, tense minutes pass between them.

Harry searches desperately for words but comes up empty, everything but the awful truth wiped clean, like it’s written, over and over, on the blank walls inside his mind: _I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU_. For a crazy moment he imagines blurting it out, imagines standing up and gripping Eggsy’s arm to turn him around just so he can say it to Eggsy’s face and watch his reaction. Imagines pulling Eggsy even closer and kissing him like he’s been desperate to do for months, repressed urges and feelings and all that infuriating goddamn love that Harry feels for this kid bubbling up and boiling over like a fucking volcano.

But Harry sits, quiet, and stares at the firm lines of Eggsy’s back.

“I’m here now,” comes out instead, weak and wobbly.

Eggsy laughs, and it cuts deeper than the sharpest blade that Harry has ever encountered. Still he doesn't turn around, and his parting words are thrown over his shoulder. “Bit late for that now, bruv.”

_It’s never too late,_ Harry wants to say, but already Eggsy is out the door.

——

On his first evening back at home he has the telly on, more for background noise than anything else in his too-still house; when he’s alone it’s like the walls are closing in on him, squeezing him tighter and tighter until he can’t breathe. Noise, any at all, lessens the claustrophobic feeling and gives him the false sense of company.

It plays softly as he putters around the kitchen setting about making tea, every movement methodic and calculated. The programme is nondescript but the sounds are soothing and drown out the ominous _tick-tick-tick_ of the clock. The routine calms him, makes him feel normal even when his depth perception is off and he misses the handle of the kettle by a few centimetres. It’s still something that he’s getting used to, something that he honestly isn't sure he’ll ever get fully used to as embarrassment creeps hot up his neck. Tries again, gripping the handle tightly this time, and twists on the tap with a soft sigh.

He’d never felt old, sure that he’d always escape the imminent clutches of death before something like this could happen to him. But with permanent nerve damage, a persistent tremor in his right hand, and sans a left eye, Harry is painfully, acutely aware of every ache, every step up a stair that makes him wince and every reflex that’s a millisecond slower than it used to be.

Most agents by his age are either retired or off of field duty, if they haven’t died; Harry had never anticipated reaching middle-age, much less on the stretch inching past it. When he was young he had assumed that he’d die on the field; he had welcomed it, actually, without an ounce of fear and with all of the bravado that being a young, trained killer with an arsenal of deadly gadgets and a near-flawless weapons score brought with it.

Now, faced with a desk job and a pay raise, the beige walls of his home and the butterflies suspended forever in motion alongside the still, reposed figure of his dog, Harry feels the fear of death like the encroaching doom that it is, and he wakes nights gasping, fingers curled in the sheets and a dead weight in his chest, leftover fear from an unremembered shadow of a nightmare gurgling at the back of his throat.

If anything, Harry’s always been good at putting on a front. Merlin is still the only person who knows, who has seen Harry wake up screaming while still attached to an IV drip, the scar on his forehead and over his eye still pink and tender; even though something tight twists around Harry’s chest when he manages to catch the concerned looks that Eggsy throws his way before he’s covering it up with that scorching anger, Merlin is still the only one who knows.

Eggsy is the type of quick study that any mentor would be proud to have, and Harry is no exception. He’d seen the natural talent, the raw potential just waiting to be honed and sculpted and formed into everything that Eggsy was capable of being, and everything that his father had had the potential to be. It had begun as a way to compensate that and had spiraled quickly out of Harry’s control. Because somewhere in there, hidden in late-night spars and martini lessons and Eggsy’s inquisitive, eager-to-learn nature, the quirk of a mouth into a smile had begun to mean something a lot more to Harry.

He’s infatuated with a boy half his age, a boy whose swagger and mannerisms and rough-spoken bluntness are all so very out of place in Kingsman. Harry likens it to that tired cliche of finding water in the desert, because that’s what Eggsy is, at least to him: An oasis, a beach-bright getaway, in a lifestyle full of stuffy traditions and even stuffier people. Some of those traditions Harry enjoys—he is old-fashioned, after all—but even someone his age knows that in order to succeed one must adapt to changes in the world around them. Simple evolution, instinctive and necessary for the continual survival of all species. Many of the recruits who come from the old-money backgrounds fail to comprehend this. It’s why Harry had taken a chance on Lee, and it’s why he’s fallen madly head over heels for Lee’s son in a way that no grown man ever should fall for someone thirty years their junior.

As he’s reaching up into the cabinets for a mug a gunshot sounds, tinny and quiet, but to Harry it’s deafening as it echoes around him cacophonously, unlocks something inside him that tastes sour and greasy as it rises up the back of his throat and trickles down his chest in chilled stripes.

The mug falls to the floor in a shatter of porcelain shards, Harry’s heartbeat racing as he turns and plasters his back against the countertop, gripping white-knuckled at the ledge as he frantically scopes out his kitchen, finely-tuned Kingsman instincts still intact despite the frayed fragility of his nerves.

His chest heaves, breaths high and fast and whistled through his teeth in ways that he’s never heard before. It’s more than a minute before he can finally piece the sound to the crime drama that has just begun, but it’s long enough that the cordite smell of blood and gunpowder, the red on his hands and the endless blue of the Kentucky sky, to come back to him. He can see the glint of the sun off the barrel of the gun, can feel again the jerk of his body and the sharp, blinding pain of the bullet tearing a path through his skull. He can still feel the utter helplessness as he’d made his way around that church, killing people who, though with outdated beliefs and poison in their hearts, hadn't deserved to be slaughtered.

With a gasp Harry turns towards the sink, braces his weight and retches, painful and deep, but nothing comes up. It still tastes rotten in the back of his throat, and it is long, agonizing moments before Harry can properly compose himself, and even longer ones once his heart rate has slowed for him to put himself back together, ever the image of a gentleman even in the solitude of his own home.

He finishes making his tea with a new mug and tries to ignore how his hands are shaking, how he has to pause when the kettle trembles too hard before he can pour. He hardly has any recollection of cleaning up the mess from the floor, just knows that once second he’s in the kitchen and the next he’s in his study and staring at the newspapers tacked up on the walls.

Every one of these hides a deed, hides the countless number of people he’s saved, but it also hides the ones he’s killed, the ones he’s lost: Young children already fallen victim to traffickers; civilian casualties from shootouts; the men and women behind it all that have met their end at the business end of Harry’s gun, or umbrella, at the click of his lighter and the shining blade hidden in his Oxford. Before, Harry had never really considered this and had tried his hardest not to dwell on things that he can’t change.

There had been an agent, back when Harry was still fresh, that had resigned—the Belvedere at the time, if he recalls correctly. There hadn't been much talk besides tittering about the rareness of a Kingsman actually resigning at the time, and Harry hadn't been privy enough back then to be in on all the details, but a year later he’d found out, through Merlin, that it had been because of a mission gone south before struggling back on course, and the then-Belvedere had watched an entire family get slaughtered.

Harry had never thought that he’d be in the same boat, that, despite the pride he feels for Kingsman and the way that his job feels etched into the very tapestry of his destiny, he would be filled with these regrets. Never had he assumed that a time would come when he’d wish that maybe, just maybe, he'd stayed in the Marines instead.

The windows to his study are open, letting in the silver-yellow of the night outside. The gossamer curtains billow in the slight breeze, dancing shadows across the square of light across his floor. Harry takes a drink of his tea.

——

He wakes up from a nightmare with his sheets twisted around him and his cheeks damp from tears, wet, shuddering gasps sucked out from his chest with every inhale. The clock on his bedside glows blue, tells him in bold digital numbers that it’s 3.15 in the morning. His ears echo with the ghosts of gunshots and the blood-wet death rattle through punctured lungs. He doesn't fall back asleep.

——

The next night, the same thing.

——  


And the next.

——

It takes a week of four hours of sleep a night and far too many tumblers of scotch before Merlin is cornering him in the halls of the mansion and pressing a bottle into his hand, turning around and walking off without a word. Harry doesn't have to look down to know what it is; when he drops his hand to his side the pills rattle, and he tightens his grip, slinks into his office. Once there he tosses them in a drawer and buries himself in paperwork.

Eggsy and Percival come back three days later, Eggsy with a dislocated shoulder, a black eye, and a cracked rib, and Percival with little more than smattered bruises and angry red slashes. It surprises no one; Harry had watched the feed, had seen how ruthlessly Eggsy had laid into the cartel, until the blood and cracks of snapping necks had become too much and Harry’s skin was crawling, body beginning to tremble until he’d had to shut off the feed and have a drink, which turned into two, before he’d finally remembered the prescription that Merlin had given him.

Seeing Eggsy in action had been…breathtaking, to say the least. A tornado of barely-restrained destruction. He strikes with the lethal grace of a snake, no hesitation in any of his actions, and in it Harry can see his younger self.

During the debriefing Eggsy finally meets Harry’s gaze and it’s enough to dry up the words from his tongue, leaving him stuttering in a way that both unprofessional and embarrassing. Harry forces himself to maintain this eye contact, gripping his pen a little too tightly, and wishes earnestly for telepathy.

There is something almost pointed, calculating, in the arch of Eggsy’s brow. His arm is in a sling, the bruise around his eye blooming a painful purple, and he looks like he hasn't slept since he left for the mission.

And yet, Harry has never seen him look so gorgeous.

“You gonna continue?” Eggsy finally asks, breaking the silence, and is that…teasing, that Harry hears in Eggsy’s voice? Surely not. Harry can hardly remember what it’s like to hear that directed at him, can hardly remember what it feels to return the favour. Harry blinks, just in case he’s hallucinating, or heard wrong, fully expecting Eggsy to glare at him again with that lethal venom in his eyes. But when Eggsy speaks again it’s casual, the barest hint of a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. “‘Cause some of us has got better stuff to do, yeah?”

“Ah, yes—my apologies,” Harry says, and clears his throat, because his voice cracking like that should not happen. “I—um, where were we?”

This time, Harry gets a laugh, and it’s like the shriveled, wilted part of him that, unknowing to Eggsy, belongs to him, begins to bloom again.

——

After that Eggsy begins to thaw, though he still refuses to speak with Harry unless absolutely necessary, and it’s like the incident after the States mission had never happened. When he’s debriefing from a mission he acts as if Harry isn't there, but if their eyes meet now there is no longer anger, just sadness, a hesitancy about what to do, where to go. They tiptoe around each other in ways that they never have, all forced politeness and work-appropriate pleasantries.

And Harry is…okay with it isn't really the phrase that he’s looking for. Perhaps resigned would be a better way of putting it. It’s like working with a scared animal: One must take slow, steady steps forward until trust is built—or, in their case, rebuilt and reinforced.

It’s another five days before Eggsy reverts back to their old ways, casual touches and the glimpse of a smile out of the corners of eyes. One day, he gets Harry an eyepatch and laughs for a solid five minutes when Harry gives him a withering look.

“Does it…hurt?” Eggsy asked, after, gesturing uselessly at his own eye. “Because, I won’t lie, you look pretty fuckin’ sick now. You looked great before, ‘course, but with the eye it makes you look badass.”

“It did, for awhile,” Harry admitted. “Still does, occasionally, when I get headaches. But Kingsman doctors truly are the best at what they do.”

Another day, Eggsy brushes his hand over Harry’s shoulder before retracting it quickly, an indiscernible look in his eye before he’s fleeing. Harry feels like the image of a handprint should be seared into his flesh, and it takes a long time for the feeling to leave. They don’t talk about Kentucky and Harry doesn't mention any side-effects.

Day by day are full of increments, slow advances forward. Harry says sorry plenty, when they have the time, but Eggsy always shuts down when he does. Eventually, Harry stops saying it and starts living in the moment. The looks Merlin gives him are no longer sympathetic, or concerned. Most of the time they’re exasperated in that special way that he has for Eggsy. Missions go by, Roxy nearly breaks a leg and Gareth actually does, and Harry settles more comfortably into his role as Arthur. Though there is still some distance between them, Harry can wait. He’s spent long enough doing that.

——

And then Eggsy, the rash, impulsive, stupid, reckless, _brave_ boy, the _idiot_ with the heart of gold and the saviour complex, gets himself kidnapped.

——

The group—Russians, from the assassination plot that Eggsy had been tracking—aren’t particularly dangerous, but Eggsy’s feed had gone dark and thick with static a day ago and Merlin is frantically trying to do whatever he can to locate him and get him the hell out of there. The crack in his composure leaves Harry floundering.

He knows that he needs to keep it together, but his grasp is tenuous at best, and every time he wonders if Eggsy is still alive everything shatters and Harry has to build it back up.

The thread of fear in Eggsy’s voice before his feed had cut out never leaves him, and, god, was this what it had been like for Eggsy, when Harry was in Kentucky? This sickly, gnawing fear that licks at him like flames to paper?

Roxy holds it together enough for all of them, but it’s impossible to miss the shadowed look in her eyes as the location proves to be more difficult to track than they had thought. The stress brings back the dreams that Harry hasn't had in weeks, and he wakes up panting and cold with sweat in his office.

“He’s resourceful and he takes no shit,” Merlin says, placating, as Harry pours more than a few fingers’ worth of scotch in a crystal tumbler. He looks as tired as the rest of them. “Eggsy is one of our finest agents, and if anyone could find their way out of a kidnapping it would be him.”

And it proves correct when, three days later, they're finally able to pinpoint Eggsy’s location, a small beeping dot in a sweeping snowcapped-mountain landscape, and twenty-four hours before he’s back in Harry’s office at HQ, looking bedraggled, his suit torn to shreds and more than a few cuts across his face.

They’ve both spent so long making mistakes and living with them, with the weight that piles up until they’re crippled, bent double and struggling to make it. Harry has choked on apologies more times than he’d care to count.

Eggsy looks at him, one long, slow look, and that’s all it takes.

There’s hardly a split second before they’re in each other’s space and clutching, Eggsy hissing through his teeth when Harry must graze a hidden bruise. A cut mars the corner of Eggsy’s lower lip. Harry’s breath catches in his throat, brief, before he’s choking out, “My dear boy,” and closing the distance.

Eggsy kisses like he has no time to lose, and Harry matches it, presses closer, closer, one hand on the small of Eggsy’s back as they switch angles and Eggsy is breaking away, hand splayed over the curve of Harry’s jaw.

“Don’t think I’ve forgiven you for your little disappearing act,” he says, suddenly serious even as his thumb strokes over Harry’s cheek.

“I’d be a fool to ask you to,” Harry responds, fitting his hand over Eggsy’s wrist, as his heart twists in his chest. He wouldn't dream of asking for something like that, not when he’d been such a _fool_ to think that hiding had been a good idea. Instead, he takes that wrist, presses his lips to the tender inside to feel the pulse jump and flutter, and says, finally, “Eggsy. Oh, my darling Eggsy. I love you.”

“You wanker,” Eggsy says, and it’s through a wet laugh. He’s grabbing at Harry, pulling him close and kissing him hard, once, twice, backing off in between each one to laugh again, joyously, carefree and loose like he hadn't just been kidnapped. “Been waiting fuckin’ _months_ to hear you say that, and all it took was me bein’ kidnapped.” His grin is wide enough to crinkle the corners of his eyes. “Had I known that I woulda let myself be taken sooner.”

Harry’s reprimand, _don’t you say something like that ever again, because if something were to happen to you I don’t know what I’d do with myself_ is cut off by the fissure in Eggsy’s voice as he says, “I love you, too,” and, then, “I’m _sorry_.”

Harry kisses him again, whispers it back, and feels, finally, like he’s grounded.

**Author's Note:**

> You can join me on [Tumblr](http://endofadream.tumblr.com) and cry about this stupid film and these stupid characters!


End file.
